Selfish gifts
Subtitle: the politics of exchange and English courtly literature, 1580/1628
By: Alison V. Scott.
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Pr
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Madison [N.J.]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 303
Subjects: English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism.; Gifts in literature.; Gifts -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century.; Gifts -- Great Britain -- History -- 16th century.; Gifts -- Political aspects -- Great Britain.; Courts and courtiers in literature.; Great Britain -- Court and courtiers -- History -- 17th century.; Great Britain -- Court and courtiers -- History -- 16th century.
Description: "Engaging with a wide range of texts on gift-theory, extending from Seneca's De Beneficiis to Derrida's Given Time, Selfish Gifts examines the importance of gift ethics and the rhetoric of honorable giving to the literature of late Elizabeth and early Stuart England. It demonstrates that the idea of the freely given and disiniterested gift shaped the language of early modern clientage, along with literary representations of patrons and patronage systems during this period.

Selfish Gifts examines how early modern clients moved quickly and strategically to assimilate the language of competition and equality, characteristic of an emerging market economy, within their existing discourses of gift exchange, in order to maximize the rewards they might induce from an increasingly diverse group of patrons."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Nonreciprocation and female rule : The Elizabethan context; title: "[A] mutual render, only me for thee" : "True" gifts in Shakespeare's sonnets; title: Competitive gifts and strategic exchange at the Jacobean court; title: Gifts for the Somerset wedding; title: "Fortune's darling, king's content" :; title: The Duke of Buckingham as gift problem.